Android Obliterates Smartphone Market

BlackBerry’s market share is dwindling quickly, according to IDC data.

Bloomberg

While Google 's Android operating system continues to distance itself from the competition in the world-wide smartphone market, one-time market leader BlackBerry is reaching new lows.

Android’s market share jumped to 79.3% in the second quarter, from 69.1% a year earlier helped in large part to a rush of new phones from Chinese handset makers.

The only other operating system that gained was Microsoft’s Windows Phone, which still has a paltry 3.7% compared with 3.1% last year. But it overtook BlackBerry as the No. 3 smartphone operating system thanks in part to Nokia 's new lineup of Lumia phones.

BlackBerry, which launched its new BlackBerry 10 operating system in January, has a worldwide market share of just 3%, down from 5% a year ago, according to IDC’s latest market share report released Wednesday. BlackBerry’s showing was so weak that IDC noted in its release that the Canadian company had reached “levels not seen in the history of IDC’s mobile phone tracker.”

The IDC report points out that “it is still early days for the platform” and that “BlackBerry will need time and resources to evangelize more end users,” but at least one phone running on the new operating system, the Z10, has not been a success. Last month BlackBerry started discounting the Z10 less than four months after its launch, and the phone can now be purchased for free on a two-year contract at retailers like Best Buy Co. Inc.

Apple’s iOS is falling further behind Android as the company prepares a new iPhone. While the number of shipments increased 20%, its market share declined to 13.2% from 16.6%.

But market share is everything. Apple is making far more more money from its iPhones than its rivals. Its average sales price, excluding carrier subsidies, was $710 in 2012, compared with an industry average for smartphones that year of $407, IDC estimates.

Samsung, which is No. 1 by unit shipments, and No. 2 Apple account for essentially all of the industry’s profit, Canaccord Genuity estimates. The firm puts Apple’s second-quarter smartphone operating profit at $5.99 billion, with an operating margin of 33%; it estimates Samsung’s profit at $5.63 billion, or 19%, including both smartphones and other handsets. Many others such as BlackBerry and Nokia are losing money in the business, it estimates.